1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an anti-theft system for a vehicle. This system has a plurality of security levels.
2. Description of Related Art
In order to protect vehicles from thefts, vehicle users have applied protective methods, such as installing vehicle anti-theft devices, and the users have reduced damages. Also, the vehicle users purchase burglary and theft insurances in order to reduce the damage in case of the theft. However, because criminal techniques for the vehicle theft have been improved in recent years, it is not possible to effectively prevent the theft only by installing the anti-theft devices on the vehicles.
Also, the vehicle user does not know historical data of the theft occurrences of a parking location, where the vehicle user chooses to park the vehicle. Thus, even when the vehicle user sets a security level of the anti-theft device, the set security level may be much lower than a security level, which corresponds to a risk level of a theft of the parking location. Furthermore, the vehicle user may not activate the anti-theft device when the user expects to park the vehicle only for a short time.
Therefore, an anti-theft system, which sets the security levels based on theft information of parking spaces, is proposed. Specifically, a control center provides a plurality of the security levels as vehicle anti-theft information services. In a place where the risk level of the theft is high, the security level is increased so that an anomaly sensing level is increased in order to sensitively sense the anomaly. Also, in a place where the risk level of the theft is low, the anomaly sensing level is decreased in order to insensitively sense the anomaly. Thus, optimum security levels are set according to conditions (see Unexamined Japanese Patent Publication No. 2003-085676).
In an invention according to the Unexamined Japanese Patent Publication No. 2003-085676, the sensing level is mainly changed and a difficulty of unlocking the vehicle is not changed. In other words, only the sensing level for a theft action is changed, but a difficulty for unlocking a security for the vehicle is not changed. Therefore, if the theft action is conducted effectively, the vehicle may be stolen before a guard or a policeman arrives. As the security levels are increased to make it difficult to unlock the security, the vehicle is more limited from being stolen. However, the blindly increased security levels may make the vehicle more inconvenient for the vehicle users to use.